#ChiStories Podcast: Tom Skilling and Climate Disruption
Tom Skilling loves the weather.
On this week’s episode of Chicago Stories, Mayor Emanuel welcomed the beloved WGN-TV chief meteorologist and forecaster to talk about Tom’s remarkable career, lifelong passion for the weather, and his increasing focus on climate change — or as he also puts it: “climate disruption” — and what we can do about it.
“There isn’t another side to this story. Climate change is happening and it has profound implications to this country.”
Tom Skilling has become an active and outspoken voice on the reality of climate change, but he didn’t start that way.
Like many people — including Mayor Emanuel — Tom was initially skeptical when he first heard of about the possibility of our planet “warming” and the Arctic “melting.” But that began to change.
“When I used to hear that the Arctic was going to melt and this warming was going to take place I thought: ‘you’re going to have to prove that to me,’” Tom told Mayor Emanuel, “but I’ve been doing this for about 50 years and I see the atmosphere doing things I’ve never have seen it do before.”
As he told Mayor Emanuel, what fully convinced him of the urgency of climate change were warm pools in the atmosphere he saw developing in the Arctic that buckle the jet stream and have a profound impact on our weather right here in the mid-Atlantic latitude.
“Climate change is not one extreme, it isn’t one heat wave, it isn’t one cold snap, it isn’t one snowstorm. It’s when these things start happening over and over and over again.”
Today, the biggest challenge to fighting climate change are the cynical efforts by the Trump administration and Republican policymakers to stonewall, deny, and outright bury any effort to combat it or even acknowledge of its reality.
“We’ve got some real issues and we’d better address them,” Tom told Mayor Emanuel. “For anybody at this stage in the game to have their heads so deeply planted in the sand — it’s just amazing to me that anybody could question what’s going on.”
While the Trump administration is doing all it can to prevent any positive action on climate change, here in Chicago we have taken the lead by creating the Chicago Climate Action Plan, hosting the North American Climate Summit, creating the Chicago Climate Charter, which now represents 67 cities and tens of millions of people across the globe, along with other measures.
In fact, when the Trump administration removed research from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Change website, Mayor Emanuel worked with cities around the country to post the information on their own sites, ensuring they’re still available online.
You can check out that site here: climatechange.cityofchicago.org
“I tell young people be too stupid to know that you’re not supposed to do be able to do what you want to do and go for it, and that’s pretty much the description of my career”
Tom’s conversation with Mayor Emanuel wasn’t all about the demands of climate change. They also spent a lot of time talking about Tom’s incredible career covering Chicago’s infamous weather, as well as the importance of following your passion.
And no one’s more surprised than Tom about how his career has unfolded.
“I’ve been able to do things I can only have dreamed about — from a little kid who used to dream about applying his newspaper route holdings to buying a bedroom radar set to where I am today,” Tom said. “It’s been quite a ride.”
Listen to the full episode as Tom and Mayor Emanuel discuss:
0:26 — Recognizing Climate Change
8:15 — Rising Sea Levels
11:45 — Predicting the Weather
14:45 — Coming To Chicago
16:25 —Following Your Passion
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